Cloud Backup vs Cloud Storage: Learn the Differences with Jungle Disk

If you are like most users of Jungle Disk, you are most likely using our Workgroup software to backup and share files with co-workers. But what is the difference between the way your Network Drive stores data and how the Backup Vault stores data?

Cloud Storage

Your Network Drive is a storage location that can be mapped like any other hard drive on your computer. This is comparable to services such as OneDrive and DropBox that allow you to store information within these locations and grant users access to share the contents of this drive with others. Within the settings for your Network Drive, you can specify a retention period (the amount of time Jungle Disk will retain a deleted file incase a restore is needed) as well as how many previous versions of a file to keep.

Though these files have previous versions and a retention period, this is not a full backup of your data. If your computer is infected by a virus, your Network Drive or other mapped storage locations could be vulnerable and could also affect your previous versions.

Cloud Backup

The Backup Vault feature of Jungle Disk allows users to create a backup job that runs on a set schedule. You can also establish a retention period for deleted files but unlike the Network Drive you are not able to access your vault outside of the Jungle Disk software. The fact that the Backup Vault is not connected or mapped to your computer means that, if infected with a virus, you can be assured that the backup of these files will not be affected.

For this reason, we also recommend backing up your Network Drive, which you can read about here

Understanding how your backups work and how your information is stored is important when preventing data loss. Remember that our support team is always here to help!